


Happy Birthday, Karen McCormick

by youcancallmecraig (orphan_account)



Category: South Park
Genre: Angst, Death, Sad, dude idk, dying
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 17:08:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 823
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3904195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/youcancallmecraig
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're celebrating her 297th birthday today.</p><p>(A post - apocalyptic short little drabble of a sad fic all about a broken kid superhero. <br/>BEFORE YOU READ - i refer to an event called the End. that's just a huge war that decimated the human population. i also mention kenny dies at about 47. i headcanon he just comes back as a ten year old, so obviously he can't go around being like "haha im kenny back from the dead and also im little" so he just goes into costume.<br/>this is dedicated to draikinator, a huge inspiration to me in writing this. they're absolutely incredible and you should definetly check them out. :V)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Happy Birthday, Karen McCormick

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Draikinator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draikinator/gifts).



You're celebrating her 297th birthday today.

You want to cry, you really do, but you've known for some odd years that she's okay now, that the hill where your baby sister is buried is secluded and beautiful. You know that every new day the sky turns pink and yellow as if it's telling her good morning, like the whole goddamned world is embracing her. You know that there are always flowers. The flowers drive you crazy, because with flowers there's weeds, and you hate the weeds, but Karen. Karen would not hate the weeds. Even when her skin was wrinkled and tanned and she had a crick in her back every time she bent down to plant roses in her garden, she never pulled out the weeds. You know she would love all the life and colour curling around her. You knew Karen McCormick better than anybody, and she would've loved the hill. 

You like the hill. In your head, you refer to it as God's Ass, the hairiest, luckiest place on this born - again Earth. It took you eight years of coughing through constant ash and smoke, of WALKING to Europe, of dying again and again and having to lug Karen's headstone to a safe location you could find when you died again. It took eight years of that as well as eighteen years of the End happening before. (You are not the slightest bit religious, but thank the Lord Karen was never alive during the End.) When you found it, the grass was just starting to grow, and the air was still painted black so you could only see part of the sun peeking through the ash, but it was enough. You are so broken, and patient, and you don't have anything left and you are the last one. The End, the Great Wars, took the whole world out, civilization by civilization, life after life, until one day you woke up alive again and you were the only one. You recall the eight years after the End with little interest. Life is important. But it was their fault. It was always their fault.

The End was never the worst part, oh no. If you thought the birthday celebrations were bad, it was nothing, nothing, compared to holding your darling, sweet, wonderful baby sister's hand while she died, while she babbled your name because it was the first time you had shown your still young, still ten years old face to her since you had supposedly died at 47, and she's babbling Kenny Kenny Kenny like she did when she was little, Kenny Kenny Kenny I found a robin egg shell that girl Rosie across the tracks collects them and ever since she moved here she could never find any could you walk me over Kenny, Kenny Kenny Kenny I found a fiver on the street and I gave it to a guy with no shoes, Kenny Kenny Kenny I love you Ken - Ken - Kenny. There was nothing worse than seeing the light fade from her pale green eyes. There was not a single pain you could ever think of comparing to watching her labored breathing stop. The doctors thought you were a psychopath, you had been patching your cape up with white and gold fabric, and your black paint on your mask was coming off, you looked like a lost circus freak, and, yeah, you were. You had no idea what you were supposed to do now that she was GONE, capital letters, never coming back, not like you did, not like you do. And that was all you could think for years - years, sitting outside her graveyard, years not even crying anymore, just sitting with blank blue eyes and trash and dust gathering around you. 

The one thing that kept you from going off the rocker, absolutely insane, was undoubtedly the fact that you did the one thing you had to - you saved her. You were the shining beacon of light for her, the caring hand, the one who knew just what she needed, who plagiarized their parents names on field trip forms. You were a good brother. The best brother. And you could have fixed what was unfixable for you. 

That kept you going. 

And now, it's been around 100 years, and it's still keeping you going. She's gone, and it hurts, and you weren't even the right kind of big brother, you were a parent, and you're the last one, and the costume is tearing and there's no cloth much less human civilization left on this Earth, and you have not spoken a single word in 127 years, but you fixed her. And she's okay now.

You are on the hill, and the sky is embracing you, warm and pink, like a beginning. The grass is soft, and tickles your ripped elbows, and you trace the letters on Karen's grave as you sing your little sister happy birthday.


End file.
